Reconsidering the Outcomes of Foreign-Imposed Regime Change

To the Editors (Ruolin Su writes)

In "You Can't Always Get What You Want: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Seldom Improves Interstate Relations," Alexander Downes and Lindsey O'Rourke offer important contributions to the study of how foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) affects interstate relations. According to Downes and O'Rourke, states should exercise caution when considering whether to pursue covert or overt FIRC, because neither type of regime change improves relations between interveners and targets by reducing the likelihood of their engaging in future conflict and, in many cases, it makes conflict more likely.¹ They imply that the emergence of post-FIRC conflicts marks the failure of FIRC in interstate relations.

Two theoretical problems arise from Downes and O'Rourke's oversimplification of the purpose of FIRCs. To begin, interveners may have objectives for engaging in FIRCs other than improving interstate relations, such as weakening rivals and thereby advancing their own security—goals that are at least as important as avoiding future conflict. Consider, for example, U.S. covert FIRCs in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. As John Prados writes, "Afghanistan by itself was of little importance to the United States."² The main objective of these FIRCs was to frustrate the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to prevent the spread of Soviet influence in the region.³ Indeed, the FIRCs forced the Soviets into a long-lasting and costly stalemate, which contributed to the ultimate demise of the Soviet empire.⁴ According to Downes and O'Rourke, however, these FIRCs would not be considered an effective policy tool, given the emergence of a militarized interstate dispute (MID) between the United States and Afghanistan in 1998.

The second theoretical problem is that Downes and O'Rourke do not acknowledge that a state's decision to engage in a FIRC may result from a lack of viable policy alternatives, and not from the perceived utility of preventing interstate conflict. Therefore, even though a FIRC may not reduce the likelihood of conflict, the intervener could still regard one as necessary. As Downes and O'Rourke note, Rwanda engaged in a FIRC against Zaire in 1997 because it considered the massive Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire (supported by Zaire's president, Mobutu Sese Seko) "an intolerable threat to its security" (p. 76). Were other policy options available to confront this threat? The absence of available evidence suggests not.

Downes and O'Rourke's article also suffers from two empirical problems. First, to test the positive association between FIRC and post-FIRC MIDs, Downes and O'Rourke "compare the likelihood of military conflict for interstate dyads that experienced a FIRC to those that did not" (pp. 50–51). This comparison is inappropriate, however, because their dyads may not have a similar propensity for conflict. Consequently, dyads with the highest likelihood of interstate conflict that have experienced a FIRC could be compared to those with the lowest likelihood of conflict and no FIRCs. In the extreme, the result could be comparisons of, for example, the likelihood of a MID between the United States and Mexico to one between the United States and Australia. Doing so risks exaggerating the positive effect of FIRCs on the initiation of MIDs.

Another factor that renders Downes and O'Rourke's results less than convincing is their coding of the China case. In their dataset, Downes and O'Rourke code China as having experienced a leadership FIRC in 1928, when Japan assassinated Chang Tso-lin. Six MIDs are coded after this supposed FIRC (in 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, and 1937). Together, they account for more than 23 percent of all MIDs following an overt leadership FIRC. This case, is worth further investigation, however, because when he was killed, Chang was not a state leader, but a Manchurian warlord. The six following MIDs were fought mainly between Japan and China, not between Japan and Manchuria. Also, Chang's killing was the result not of a decision made by the Japanese central government, but of a plot by the radical wing of the...